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The Forever Family
COLLECTION
July 2019
A Forever Family:His Unexpected Family
August 2019
A Forever Family:Their Miracle Child
September 2019
A Forever Family:Falling for You
October 2019
A Forever Family:Their Christmas Delivery
January 2020
A Forever Family:Reunited by their Baby
February 2020
A Forever Family:Their Doorstep Delivery
BRENDA HARLEN is a multi-award winning author for Mills & Boon who has written over twenty-five books for the company.
LIZ FIELDING was born with itchy feet. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain. Seven of her titles have been nominated for RWA’s Rita®; and she has won the Best Traditional Romance in 2000, the British Romance Prize in 2005 and the Best Short Contemporary Romance in 2006.
Born and raised just outside of Toronto, Ontario, AMY RUTTAN fled the big city to settle down with the country boy of her dreams. After the birth of her second child, Amy was lucky enough to realize her life long dream of becoming a romance author. When she’s not furiously typing away at her computer, she’s a mum to three wonderful children who use her as a personal taxi and chef.
A Forever Family: Their Doorstep Delivery
Baby Talk & Wedding Bells
Brenda Harlen
Secret Baby, Surprise Parents
Liz Fielding
Alejandro’s Sexy Secret
Amy Ruttan
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN: 978-0-008-90659-7
A FOREVER FAMILY: THEIR DOORSTEP DELIVERY
Baby Talk & Wedding Bells © 2017 Brenda Harlen Secret Baby, Surprise Parents © 2009 Liz Fielding Alejandro’s Sexy Secret © 2016 Amy Ruttan
Published in Great Britain 2020
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk
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Table of Contents
Cover
About the Authors
Title Page
Copyright
Note to Readers
Baby Talk & Wedding Bells
Back Cover Text
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Secret Baby, Surprise Parents
Dedication
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Alejandro’s Sexy Secret
Back Cover Text
Dedication
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
EPILOGUE
About the Publisher
Baby Talk & Wedding Bells
Brenda Harlen
The Start Of A New Chapter?
Braden Garrett felt blessed the instant his adopted baby girl was laid in his arms. Fifteen months later, the widowed CEO feels out of place as the only man at the local library’s toddler music class! Until his gaze falls on the librarian. Beautiful Cassie MacKinnon sparks a desire he’d long forgotten...but why can’t he convince her to go out with him?
After a disastrous broken engagement, Cassie’s given up her dreams of white picket fences. That is, until tall, dark and sexy Mr. Garrett sparks fantasies of a different kind! Tempting as Braden is, though, Cassie is afraid the single dad only sees her as a substitute mommy. Or is the dedicated daddy offering everything she’s ever wanted—true love and family—in one perfect package?
For Sheryl Davis – a fabulous friend, dedicated writer and librarian extraordinaire. Thanks for showing me ‘a day in the life,’ answering my endless questions and sharing my passion for hockey (which has absolutely nothing to do with this story but needed to be noted!)
Chapter One
By all accounts, Braden Garrett had lived a charmed life. The eldest son of the family had taken on the role of CEO of Garrett Furniture before he was thirty. A year later, he met and fell in love with Dana Collins. They were married ten months after that and, on the day of their wedding, Braden was certain he had everything he’d ever wanted.
Two years later, it seemed perfectly natural that they would talk about having a baby. Having grown up with two brothers and numerous cousins in close proximity, Braden had always envisioned having a family of his own someday. His wife seemed just as eager as he was, but after three more years and countless failures, her enthusiasm had understandably waned.
And then, finally, their lives were blessed by the addition of Saige Lindsay Garrett.
Braden’s life changed the day his tiny dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter was put in his arms. Eight weeks later, it changed again. Now, more than a year later, he was a single father trying to do what was best for his baby girl—most of the time not having a clue what that might be.
Except that right now—at eight ten on a Tuesday morning—he was pretty sure that what she needed was breakfast. Getting her to eat it was another matter entirely.
“Come on, sweetie. Daddy has to drop you off at Grandma’s before I go to work for a meeting at ten o’clock.”
His daughter’s dark almond-shaped eyes lit up with anticipation in response to his words. “Ga-ma?”
“That’s right, you’re going to see Grandma today. But only if you eat your cereal and banana.”
She carefully picked up one of the cereal O’s, pinching it between her thumb and forefinger, then lifted her hand to her mouth.
Braden made himself another cup of coffee while Saige picked at her breakfast, one O at a time. Not that he was surprised. Just like every other female he’d ever known, she did everything on her own schedule.
“Try some of the banana,” he suggested.
His little girl reached for a chunk of the fruit. “Na-na.”
“That’s right, sweetie. Ba-na-na. Yummy.”
She shoved the fruit in her mouth.
“Good girl.”
She smiled, showing off a row of tiny white teeth, and love—sweet and pure—flooded through him. Life as a single parent was so much more difficult than he’d anticipated, and yet, it only ever took one precious smile from Saige to make him forget all of the hard stuff. He absolutely lived for his little girl’s smiles—certain proof that he wasn’t a total screw-up in the dad department and tentative hope that maybe her childhood hadn’t been completely ruined by the loss of her mother.
He sipped his coffee as Saige reached for another piece of banana. This time, she held the fruit out to him, offering to share. He lowered his head to take the banana from her fingers. Fifteen months earlier, Braden would never have imagined allowing himself to be fed like a baby bird. But fifteen months earlier, he didn’t have the miracle that was his daughter.
He hadn’t known it was possible to love someone so instantly and completely, until that first moment when his baby girl was put into his arms.
I want a better life for her than I could give her on my own—a real home with two parents who will both love her as much as I do.
It didn’t seem too much to ask, but they’d let Lindsay down. And he couldn’t help but worry that Saige would one day realize they’d let her down, too.
For now, she was an incredibly happy child, seemingly unaffected by her motherless status. Still, it wasn’t quite the family that Lindsay had envisioned for her baby girl when she’d signed the adoption papers—or that Braden wanted for Saige, either.
“I’m not going anywhere,” he promised his daughter now. “Daddy will always be here for you, I promise.”
“Da-da.” Saige’s smile didn’t just curve her lips, it shone in her eyes and filled his whole heart.
“That’s right—it’s you and me kid.”
“Ga-ma?”
“Yes, we’ve got Grandma and Grandpa in our corner, too. And lots of aunts, uncles and cousins.”
“Na-na?”
He smiled. “Yeah, some of them are bananas, but we don’t hold that against them.”
She stretched out her arms, her hands splayed wide open. “Aw dun.”
“Good girl.” He moistened a washcloth under the tap to wipe her hands and face, then removed the tray from her high chair and unbuckled the safety belt around her waist.
As soon as the clip was unfastened, she threw herself at him. He caught her against his chest as her little arms wrapped around his neck, but he felt the squeeze deep inside his heart.
“Ready to go to Grandma’s now?”
When Saige nodded enthusiastically, he slung her diaper bag over his shoulder, then picked up his briefcase and headed toward the door. His hand was on the knob when the phone rang. He was already fifteen minutes late leaving for work, but he took three steps back to check the display, and immediately recognized his parents’ home number. Crap.
He dropped his briefcase and picked up the receiver. “Hi, Mom. We’re just on our way out the door.”
“Then it’s lucky I caught you,” Ellen said. “I chipped a tooth on my granola and I’m on my way to the dentist.”
“Ouch,” he said sympathetically, even as he mentally began juggling his morning plans to accommodate taking Saige into the office with him.
“I’m so sorry to cancel at the last minute,” she said.
“Don’t be silly, Mom. Of course you have to have your tooth looked at, and Saige is always happy to hang out at my office.”
“You can’t take her to the office,” his mother protested.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s Tuesday,” she pointed out.
“And every Tuesday, I meet with Nathan and Andrew,” he reminded her.
“Tuesday at ten o’clock is Baby Talk at the library.”
“Right—Baby Talk,” he said, as if he’d remembered. As if he had any intention of blowing off a business meeting to take his fifteen-month-old daughter to the library instead.
“Saige loves Baby Talk,” his mother told him.
“I’m sure she does,” he acknowledged. “But songs and stories at the library aren’t really my thing.”
“Maybe not, but they’re Saige’s thing,” Ellen retorted. “And you’re her father, and it’s not going to hurt you to take an hour out of your schedule so that she doesn’t have to miss it this week.”
“I have meetings all morning.”
“Meetings with your cousins,” she noted, “both fathers themselves who wouldn’t hesitate to reschedule if their kids needed them.”
Which he couldn’t deny was true. “But...Baby Talk?”
“Yes,” his mother said firmly, even as Saige began singing “wound an’ wound”—her version of the chorus from the “Wheels on the Bus” song that she’d apparently learned in the library group. “Miss MacKinnon—the librarian—will steer you in the right direction.”
He sighed. “Okay, I’ll let Nate and Andrew know that I have to reschedule.”
“Your daughter appreciates it,” Ellen said.
He looked at the little girl still propped on his hip, and she looked back at him, her big brown eyes sparkling as she continued to sing softly.
She truly was the light of his life, and his mother knew there wasn’t anything he wouldn’t do for her.
“Well, Saige, I guess today is the day that Daddy discovers what Baby Talk is all about.”
His daughter smiled and clapped her hands together.
The main branch of the Charisma Public Library was located downtown, across from the Bean There Café and only a short walk from the hospital and the courthouse. It was a three-story building of stone and glass with a large open foyer filled with natural light and tall, potted plants. The information desk was a circular area in the center, designed to be accessible to patrons from all sides.
Cassandra MacKinnon sat at that desk, scanning the monthly calendar to confirm the schedule of upcoming events. The library wasn’t just a warehouse of books waiting to be borrowed—it was a hub of social activity. She nodded to Luisa Todd and Ginny Stafford, who came in together with bulky knitting bags in hand. The two older women—friends since childhood—had started the Knit & Purl group and were always the first to arrive on Tuesday mornings.
Ginny stopped at the desk and took a gift bag out of her tote. “Will you be visiting with Irene this week?” she asked Cassie, referring to the former head librarian who now lived at Serenity Gardens, a seniors’ residence in town.
“Tomorrow,” Cassie confirmed.
“Would you mind taking this for me?” Ginny asked, passing the bag over the desk. “Irene always complains about having cold feet in that place, so I knitted her a couple pairs of socks. I had planned to see her on the weekend, but my son and daughter-in-law were in town with their three kids and I couldn’t tear myself away from them.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t mind,” Cassie told her. “And I know she’ll love the socks.”
Luisa snorted; Ginny smiled wryly. “Well, I’m sure she’ll appreciate having warm feet, anyway.”
Cassie tucked the bag under the counter and the two women continued on their way.
She spent a little bit of time checking in the materials that had been returned through the book drop overnight, then arranging them on the cart for Helen Darrow to put back on the shelves. Helen was a career part-time employee of the library who had been hired when Irene Houlahan was in charge. An older woman inherently distrustful of technology, Helen refused to touch the computers and spent most of her time finding books to fill online and call-in requests of patrons, putting them back when they were returned—and shushing anyone who dared to speak above a whisper in the book stacks.
“Hey, Miss Mac.”
Cassie glanced up to see Tanya Fielding, a high school senior and regular at the Soc & Study group, at the desk. “Good morning, Tanya. Aren’t you supposed to be in school this morning?”
The teen shook her head. “Our history teacher is giving us time to work on our independent research projects this week.”
“What’s your topic?”
“The role of German U-boats in the Second World War.”
“Do you want to sign on to one of the computers?”
“No. Mr. Paretsky wants—” she made air quotes with her fingers “—real sources, actual paper books so that we can do proper page citations and aren’t relying on made-up stuff that someone posted on the internet.”
Cassie pushed her chair away from the desk. “Nonfiction is upstairs. Let’s go see what we can find.”
After the teen was settled at a table with a pile of books, Cassie checked that the Dickens Room was ready for the ESL group coming in at ten thirty and picked up a stack of abandoned magazines from a window ledge near the true crime section.
She put the magazines on Helen’s cart and returned to her desk just as George Bowman came in. George and his wife, Margie, were familiar faces at the library. She knew all of the library’s regular patrons—not just their names and faces, but also their reading habits and preferences. And, over the years, she’d gotten to know many of them on a personal level, too.
She was chatting with Mr. Bowman when the tall, dark and extremely handsome stranger stepped into view. Her heart gave a little bump against her ribs, as if to make sure she was paying attention, and warm tingles spread slowly through her veins. But he wasn’t just a stranger, he was an outsider. The expensive suit jacket that stretched across his broad shoulders, the silk tie neatly knotted at his throat and the square, cleanly shaven jaw all screamed “corporate executive.”
She would have been less surprised to see a rainbow-colored unicorn prancing across the floor than this man moving toward her. Moving rather slowly and with short strides considering his long legs, she thought—and then she saw the little girl toddling beside him.
The child she did recognize. Saige regularly attended Baby Talk at the library with her grandmother, which meant that the man holding the tiny hand had to be her dad: Braden Garrett, Charisma’s very own crown prince.
A lot of years had passed since Braden was last inside the Charisma Public Library, and when he stepped through the front doors, he had a moment of doubt that he was even in the right place. In the past twenty years, the building had undergone major renovations so that the address was the only part of the library that remained unchanged.
He stepped farther into the room, noting that the card catalogue system had been replaced by computer terminals and the checkout desk wasn’t just automated but self-serve—which meant that the kids borrowing books or other materials weren’t subjected to the narrow-eyed stare of Miss Houlahan, the old librarian who marked the cards inside the back covers of the books, her gnarled fingers wielding the stamp like a weapon. He’d been terrified of the woman.
Of course, the librarian had been about a hundred years old when Braden was a kid—or so she’d seemed—so he didn’t really expect to find her still working behind the desk. But the woman seated there now, her fingers moving over the keyboard as she conversed with an elderly gentleman, was at least twenty years younger than he’d expected, with chin-length auburn hair that shone with gold and copper highlights. Her face was heart-shaped with creamy skin and a delicately pointed chin. Her eyes were dark—green, he guessed, to go with the red hair—and her glossy lips curved in response to something the old man said to her.
Saige wiggled again, silently asking to be set down. Since she’d taken her first tentative steps four months earlier, she preferred to walk everywhere. Braden set her on her feet but held firmly to her hand and headed toward the information desk.
The woman he assumed was Miss MacKinnon stopped typing and picked up a pen to jot a note on a piece of paper that she then handed across the desk to the elderly patron.
The old man nodded his thanks. “By the way, Margie wanted me to tell you that our daughter, Karen, is expecting again.”
“This will be her third, won’t it?”
“Third and fourth,” he replied.
Neatly arched brows lifted. “Twins?”
He nodded again. “Our seventh and eighth grandchildren.”
“That’s wonderful news—congratulations to all of you.”
“You know, I keep waiting for the day when you have big news to share.”
The librarian smiled indulgently. “Didn’t I tell you just this morning that there’s a new John Grisham on the shelves?”
Mr. Bowman shook his head. “Marriage plans, Cassie.”
“You’ve been with Mrs. Bowman for almost fifty years—I don’t see you giving her up to run away with me now.”
The old man’s ears flushed red. “Fifty-one,” he said proudly. “And I didn’t mean me. You need a handsome young man to put a ring on your finger and give you beautiful babies.”
“Until that happens, you keep bringing me pictures of your gorgeous grandbabies,” she suggested.
“I certainly will,” he promised.
“In the meantime—” she picked up a flyer from the counter and offered it to Mr. Bowman “—I hope you’re planning to come to our Annual Book & Bake Sale on the fifteenth.”